In some of her earliest works, Paredes blurs the boundary between the human and animal worlds, transforming herself into entities that alternate between recognizable and unfamiliar bodily forms. The photographed subjects move between constructed indoor and naturalistic outdoor spaces, their postures ranging from passive vulnerability to startling confrontation. Paredes, whose personal history involves numerous migrations and adaptations, probes for a more holistic understanding of identity that transcends traditional categorizations, as curator and writer Elizabeth Ferrer has identified as “a more sublime state of being.”